Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
mine. We all need to live, I think. Yes? Few of us are saints, few are
sinners, really. The rest - we live. No? I have nine children, five
grandchildren. They, too, must live. Also . . .' He paused. 'I also have
a brother,' he finally said, leading me out onto the broad veranda,
adding no more to this bizarrely weighted statement.
So what? I felt like saying. I've got a brother, too. But he'd made
his point all the same. We both lived by peddling lies that pleased,
softened the pain of the living. And the dead. The boredom, the
pain: that was our business. We were colleagues.
I suddenly respected the man. You do not have to be holy to be
wise. To know yourself and accept what you see is enough, often
more than enough. He knew that I had not come to hear him repeat
some old myth.
'You see those lions,' he said, pointing to the two gigantic tigers
with their gleaming eyes perched upon his veranda walls.
'Yeah, I did sort of notice them. Aren't they tigers, though?'
'Only a king can have lions outside his home. It is special for the
king only.'
The difference between lions and tigers was obviously as
inconsequential as the difference between centuries and millennia.
'Really?'
Again I got those baleful eyes. 'So,' he said, very slowly, 'you see -
I
am
a king.'
Those vulgar tigers represented a lot. In terms of caste, he was
the lowest of the low. Yet the system, perversely, allowed him to be a
king in more than just name. The dom raja had challenged the
system itself, and won. He knew how corrupt the whole structure of
caste Hinduism now was if it could make an outcast king just because
he had something no one else had and
everyone
needed.
'You think that because you die in Kashi and burn in the fire of
Indra you will not pay for your sins?' the dom raja asked.
'Definitely not.'
He smiled. 'Why?'
'It would make the entire order of the universe nonsense.'
'I do hope you will not write stupid things about me,' he added
incongruously. 'Everyone does.'
'Like what?' I asked.
